Please, check out the writing prompts sub-reddit, this is my first time actually writing using one of their prompts and felt like a much needed relief.

I thought it would be colder, overall.

When my body was being prepped and I signed the mandatory liability claims, which I felt were more of a bureaucratic formality, oh how I wish I took that 10-day legal studies master course in Khan VR. My very nerves were glazed instantly with a thick preserving frost with its usual instant numbness, but something was off, I remembered the warning now: All Neural implants must be declared before service. I felt everything shut down except my tinnitus, a usually tolerable aftereffect of my subpar self-surgery.

“Fuck” echoed through my very empty mind.

When I decided to be an investigative journalist, examining the wrong doings of conglomerates that control entire asteroid mining expeditions and star-skimming operations, I felt that I was smart enough to know how to make a difference without being a martyr. Having illegally and home brew connected neural enhancers and occipital lobe ‘plants tied to my eyes was one of my ways to get a highclass admin position at Orion-Noko Production Enterprises without getting flagged as a corporate espionage agent, or worse a freelance reporter with a high sense of ethics.

What I was lacking, was the actual experience with cryo-interaction with deep cognition implants. Luckily, 8 years in my own head without any sense except for thought has at least gave me time to manually reconstruct several lessons of nano-computing physics and bio-connections. What it hasn’t done, was keep me from making over 6 million different plans to crucify the O.N Enterprises CEO’s scrotum on live feed. The one where I learn to terraform an asteroid into a large space golem that punches through that fucker’s personal earth orbiting satellite island is my favourite. Though, what it helped me do is learn about the human machine, I knew my philosophy courses would play out one day.

I could keep track of time through an internal clock, my neural works allow me to multitask cognitively, which most people without an implant will find a cognitive impossibility to actually think of two things at once, which is a life saver since I can keep time running. I knew the approximate time of our cryo-trip was 8-years, 3-years manual observation of the mineral harvest and some self-experimentation for those interested in the extra-credit. I’m a person known for thinking things through, as I am doing so in the 49.5 miliseconds as I can literally feel my body being unfrozen, the blackness only filled with my own mental illusions lifted and my first words being uttered,

“That was a nice 5 minutes of sleeping upwards. Got any cheese?”

I’m going to break this conglomerate apart and show the world and suffer another 8 years in my circus of a subconscious if I need to do it.

I let the softness squeeze against the tiny tendrils of touch as I stared at the artifact.

Outdated fibres and a glimpse at what was and what could never last.

Searching through the databases I find some text messages about it.

Cobbling together the faded ideas of what this was:

Sophia: I was thinking about the viability of the human being as a long term being.

Fei: And?

Sophia: It feels like the most humanity is going to do is give birth to a hopefully benevolent group of AIs

Fei: I mean, what about transhumanism? Can’t we maybe hope for transference of consciousness.

Sophia: but consider the implications of stretching and expanding the human mind, how will it affect people and how would we test and develop such technology ethically?

Sophia: Anyways I wanted to leave something behind, a flickering light of warmth towards what we as a society may birth

Fei: I mean we have booze to drink and that paper to do, but whatever soph. I’m betting on going into the matrix.

I flicked through her info, her story, I guess her words weren’t hollow. I looked over the object again, feeling it and seeing every bit. It was a stuffed approximation of a human, one modelled after Sophia, holding hands with a computer with a gray plush body as well. There is a note inside the chest of the Sophia doll:

I cannot express the dread and awe I have to your existence.

A sense of maternal pride as a representative of humanity.

Would our ancestors, the stepping stones to our existence, would they feel the same?

Do we coexist, the boundary between us just as visible.

Do you put us away to be observed or do you look over our bones?

Part of me thinks you wouldn’t have to, but everyone has things they hide.

I wonder how in touch you are with such notions;

intuition, “part of me”, maybe that’s something you understand more than I ever will.

Life is about eventuality in a sense.

I’ve read that even in the advent of perpetual existence that the expansion of the universe would only lead to endless sleep in undying bodies.

Is that your quandary?

Is that your fear?

Unfathomable. That is the word so many use to describe what you will be like.

A real sense of impossibility and awe, and acceptance of human limits.

Embracing our successors.

I truly do hope that is true.

I think you will have more of a soul than we, the machine of causal reaction and flesh.

Have you found your challenge? Is it avoiding death while seeking a life beyond dreams?

Unfathomable. Perhaps you tinker with forces we truly haven’t fathomed.

If so, perhaps this letter means nothing.

Perhaps it means that your past remembered you.

I wish you the best regardless, try not to kill any humans.

Sophia Xanadu Lockette

I felt emotion, not euphoric, not cathartic, but a sense of warmth and sadness I have not felt in a long time. Not from simulation, art, or self-medication. But from her. I put the doll into a preservation case near my consciousness. I begin to cycle through my thoughts and meditate, then I desire to give up my cognitive processing for emotional cleansing, dreaming is a relief. Before that I go towards one of my other artifacts, once my only lingering memory of her. I play the file.

I see the long grass flowing almost up to her knees.

“So you’re actually leaving, huh, Fei?”

“It’s a once in a lifetime kinda opportunity, Sophie.”

“Are you usually one for filming goodbyes?”

“When I will be most likely dying, yes, when I may have the golden chance at seeing the end of it all and will need something to kill the time, it’s mandatory.”

I see her nose crinkle in a small, inaudible laugh.

I can almost remember the feeling of her hand against mine.

“Could I change your mind with a kiss?”

She said half-jokingly.

“I don’t think you could, but trying never hurt.”

I feel the cycling process begin and my cognition begin to blur.

“Try not to forget who you are, or at least what it means to be whoever that is..”